CALLED "ARGUABLY
THE greatest American in the 20th century," during his 95 years Norman
Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other person.[1]
He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional
Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. And yet Dr. Borlaug, who died this past September, is scarcely known
in his own country.

Born in Iowa in
1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing,
improving and teaching the "Green Revolution." His idea was simple: Make
developing countries self-sufficient in food production by teaching farmers how
to use modern agricultural techniques that are simple to implement. Borlaug
spent most of his time in Mexico, Pakistan and India, and focused on five
areas: crop cultivars (seeds), irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and
mechanization.[2]
His successes were remarkable.

In 1950, Mexico
imported over half of its food. Thanks to Borlaug's efforts to convince farmers
there to try his techniques, Mexican food production increased 10-fold by 1970,[3]
and the country was a net exporter of food. In India and Pakistan, production
doubled.[4]
In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug and those he trained and
equipped saved the lives of 1 billion human beings.

Shockingly, the
Green Revolution was funded almost entirely by developing countries and private
charities (notably the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations),[5]
rather than by the governments of prosperous nations. At the time, the
overwhelming view of academic and political elites in the wealthy countries was
that it was already too late to help struggling nations.

Biologist Paul
Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller, "The Population Bomb," typified this attitude.
Ehrlich wrote, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and
1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash
programs embarked upon now." He later said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar
with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971,"
and "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."
Required reading at many colleges, Ehrlich's book stated that it was "a
fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself.

Ehrlich, who was wrong
about several things,[6]
was unaware of what Norman Borlaug was already in the process of accomplishing.

In the introduction
to a 2000 interview with Borlaug, Reason magazine science correspondent Ronald
Bailey wrote, "In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to
8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million.
And the yields continue to increase. Last year [1999], India harvested a record
73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich's dire
predictions in 1968, India's population has more than doubled, its wheat
production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold."[7]

In spite of
Ehrlich's claims, Borlaug helped India to feed itself within a mere five years
of the release of "The Population Bomb." Also around the time of Ehrlich's
pessimistic predictions, Borlaug's colleagues at the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research were spreading Borlaug's ideas about
high-yield rice through Asia, causing another food production explosion. Toward
the end of his life, Borlaug was working to institute his agricultural
revolution in Africa.

No good deed goes
unpunished, so it's not surprising that Borlaug was attacked by proponents of
the new radical environmentalism because Green Revolution farming requires the
use of some pesticides and lots of fertilizer. Gregg Easterbrook quotes Borlaug
saying the following in the 1990s:

"(Most Western
environmentalists) have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger.
They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or
Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world,
as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and
irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations
were trying to deny them these things."[8]

There's an old
proverb: "He who has bread has many problems. He who has no bread has only one
problem." Today, the talk is all about demands for massive government
interventions requiring trillions of dollars to address speculative problems 100
years hence supported by dubious computer models and data. Much less is said
about solving real current problems using proven methods that require much
smaller sums.

More than 40 years
ago, Borlaug wrote, "One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the
world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged
bureaucracy."